COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA TIES ON BRINK OF CRISIS

U.S.-Aided Drug War Imperiled

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Rising frictions between Colombia and Venezuela's
leftist President Hugo Chavez have pushed relations to the brink of a
crisis and cast a new shadow over a U.S.-financed Colombian offensive
against drug traffickers.

Both countries called home their ambassadors for ``consultations''
this week and President Andres Pastrana of Colombia ordered his
highest foreign policy body, the Foreign Relations Advisory
Commission, to review the feud.

Bogota media have been filled with reports and opinion columns
accusing Chavez of backing Colombia's leftist guerrillas, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and National
Liberation Army, or ELN.

Worried U.S. officials say the tensions could help undermine Plan
Colombia, Pastrana's ambitious plan to attack his nation's cocaine and
heroin industries with the help of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package.

``We hope this will not be permanent,'' Under Secretary of State
Thomas Pickering told reporters, ``because obviously it takes a strong
amount of international cooperation to deal with these particularly
difficult problems.''

Setting off the crisis was the decision by the Chavez government to
invite a top FARC official, Olga Marin, to address a meeting last week
of a Latin American parliamentary group held in Venezuela's National
Assembly.

Venezuela's foreign minister, Jose Vicente Rangel, said the invitation
was part of his government's support for Pastrana's 2-year-old peace
talks with the FARC. But his Colombian counterpart, Guillermo
Fernandez de Soto, called it ``an unsolicited intervention in issues
that Colombians must decide.''

Rangel said he wants to restore a ``climate of respect'' between the
two nations and added that Pastrana and Chavez could meet this
weekend, during Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox's inauguration, to
discuss the crisis.

But Fernandez de Soto made it clear the Marin invitation was only the
latest in a series of recent brushes between two countries that share
a 1,376-mile land border and have a history of rivalries going back
170 years.

Chavez has denied repeated media reports that he has sent weapons and
money to the FARC and ELN and meets regularly with rebel officials in
Caracas, in effect lending legitimacy to the Marxist rebels.

But he has steadly criticized Plan Colombia as the ``Vietnamization''
of Colombia's civil war, and Sunday blamed his neighbor's violence on
``a rancid Colombian oligarchy that does not understand peace.''

In a slap at the Pastrana government's failure to control much of its
own territory, Rangel has said he would be right in talking to the
Colombian rebels because ``you have to talk with whoever really rules.''

Caracas officials have long blocked Colombian truck traffic across the
border, arguing security concerns, and they canceled a recent meeting
with senior Colombian military officers at the last minute without
explanation.

Venezuelan security forces have refused to accept several recent waves
of Colombian refugees fleeing the violence here, forcing them to
return home even when refugee organizations complained that they could
be killed.

Pastrana government officials were also miffed last month when
Venezuela barred a U.S. Coast Guard cutter from the Gulf of Venezuela,
a Caribbean body of water shared by Colombia and its neighbor.

More alarmingly, Bogota officials have been complaining since October
about Venezuelan army incursions into Colombian border areas,
apparently in ``hot pursuit'' of alleged Colombian cattle rustlers.

Venezuelan troops torched five houses in the border hamlet of Tres
Bocas Oct. 13 and a month later returned to detain four Colombians
suspected of drug trafficking, according to the Foreign Ministry in
Bogota.

U.S. narcotics experts say Venezuela is a significant transit route
for Colombian cocaine headed for the U.S. and European markets,
accounting for some 100 metric tons of exports per year by some estimates.

Adding to the concerns here, the respected Bogota news weekly Cambio
reported recently that Colombian troops had opened fire Oct. 1 on
Venezuelan soldiers spotted well inside the Colombian border,
mistaking them for guerrillas, killing one and wounding two.

Cambio also reported that a Venezuelan army general had met secretly
with senior FARC officials inside Colombia to negotiate the release of
six cattle ranchers kidnapped in Venezuela by the rebels and taken to
Colombia.

Colombia's Defense Ministry and National Police have declined all
comment on the Cambio reports, but one army officer said the incidents
were hushed up to avoid fanning the fires of confrontation with Chavez.